Governor follows grant money to local farms

Farmer Scott Cheetham, right, leads Governor Dannel P. Malloy, center, and State Department of Agriculture Commissioner Steven Reviczky, left, on a tour of White Oak Farm in Stonington Tuesday, Nov. 13, 2012, as part of the governor's tour to promote Connecticut based agriculture. White Oak Farm has been in the Cheetham family as Scott says "since the King of England."

Gov. Dannel P. Malloy toured three local farms Tuesday morning to learn how grant money from the Department of Agriculture’s new Farmland Restoration Program is being spent.

The program was enacted as part of the October 2011 jobs bill with the goal of bringing fallow farmland in the state back into production. The program set aside $5 million for restoration projects on farms throughout Connecticut and was up and running beginning in February. Malloy said about $1 million has been set aside so far for 50 farms.

According to the Department of Agriculture website, farmers may qualify for grants of up to $20,000. The program is meant to serve about 250 farms in all.

Wearing khakis and boots and joined by three Department of Agriculture staffers, Malloy toured White Oak Farm in Stonington late Wednesday morning, trudging through a field with owner Scott Cheetham and chatting about the 400-year-old farm's history and the progress enabled by the $17,000 grant Cheetham will receive.

On the 200-acre farm, where Cheetham, 36, raises beef cows, the grant money will go toward rehabilitating seven acres of land to grow hay and possibly produce, Cheetham said.

"In the past, when you wanted to clear land, it was all on you," he said.

Malloy said the program not only promotes agriculture in the state, but also addresses a need for jobs and a growing demand for local food.

"We have a lot of land that over the last 50 years went fallow in Connecticut, but what we now know is there is an increasing market for locally produced foods, whether it's milk or vegetables or meat production," he said. "We want to promote that. We want to be very supportive of farming in the state of Connecticut. It's part of our history, it's part of our culture, but it also represents a gigantic opportunity for job creation, to bring back lands for production purposes."